


fraternization

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - Manga, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, Postseries, yeah like the whole nonfraternization issue could stop these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:37:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts as a joke, but the rule-breaking is all too real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fraternization

 

 

 

 

 

 

`What this is saying is...´

He has unburied a squalid volume on Army regulations from his shelves. Open on the kitchen counter like a joke, while Riza studies his face from the other end of the room. It is a small kitchen, so being on the other end still doesn't leave a lot of space for manoeuvre. They stand quite close.

`What this is saying is... for example according to this thing... we can't get married,´ Roy says with mocking solemnity.

Riza shrugs with heavy sadness, joining the joke.

`I guess. Are you proposing?´

`I didn't say I was. It's an hypothetical situation. If I were to ask you to marry me, we couldn't because of fraternization laws.´

`If you were to ask...´

`Yes... _if_.´

`Then...´

He clears his throat, neither too sure if that's part of the game or unscripted.

`We could do other things,´ he says.

She arches one eyebrow as Roy takes one step towards her.

`Other things?´

`Mmm-uh.´

`Like what?´

`Like... this?´

He rests his hand, open-palmed, on her hip. (she notices how warm his hand feels)

`I'm quite sure the non-fraternization policy covers... that.´

Her expression is severe but she rests her hands against his chest and then, after a moment (and Roy can feel a too-predictable shiver down his spine just from that touch), she grabs his collar and, very slowly, starts undoing the top button of his shirt.

`Ah, well. I just wanted to be clear on the... details.´

`You wanted to be thorough.´

`Yes, that's it. _Thorough_.´

`Yes.´

`So... I guess we'll have to wait.´

`Yes, we'll have to wait...´ she says, undoing another button of his shirt.

Perhaps it's too early to be doing this, Roy thinks, because the light falling on the kitchen counter is too orange, too yellow, too alive, sunset is blurring the edges of things or sharpening them.

Roy shrugs under her hands: `A pity, really.´

The moment before the moment. He searches her eyes, because this is not a decision he alone can make and everything up until now has been a game of pretended bravery. The joke, the teasing, has to stop at some point, to leave room for something else. For this. Riza gives him the faintest nod (but it's enough, it's more than enough, even if it is necessary) and Roy leans into her and touches her lips with his, exploratory. He doesn't mean to but he draws in a long breath and presses his body to hers with the second kiss. They are _both_ startled by the intensity of it, and of her reply. They are supposed to be more patient that this. They are not.

They spend a long time like this.

 

 

 

**[x]**

He has trouble getting used to kissing her just yet. Her face is too close. This is someone he's known for most of his adult life and there's something about it that Roy finds too ludicrous, out of context; he smiles against her mouth and then it's all well and fine, her face is not too close, it's just perfect.

He feels like they have skipped a conversation, a whole set of conversations. He's pretty sure they are supposed to be talking about their feelings but they are too familiar for that, they _know_. There's no mystery here; she loves him, he doesn't have to ask. He wonders if that makes him arrogant, the knowing, the thinking he knows.

He puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her into an awkward hug. He kisses her forehead and left temple. Her hands come to rest on the small of his back, half-holding him, half-anchoring.

`... bedroom? Or is that too –?´

`That would break several rules, I think.´

`Mmmm,´ he moans, putting his mouth to the beginning of her neck. And pressing his thigh between her legs he says: `More comfortable than the kitchen, though.´

Her knees bend a bit and he is half-holding her against the furniture as they navigate a path across the hallway. Roy wants to remember everything with perfect clarity but he can't help but feel a bit light-headed when finally confronted with the moment, truth be told.

They stumble.

 

 

 

**[x]**

That first time is rushed and impatient, they only take off the bare minimum of clothes for the mechanics of it. It's all fingers twisted around fabric, and mouths, and it's slightly uncomfortable. Riza can't decide if it's exactly how she has imagined it or if it's nothing like she has imagined it.

(she still has trouble admitting that part, how she has _imagined_ it a number of times; she has been comfortable with her feelings for Roy for quite some time, but she hadn't completely come to terms with the _precision_ of it all, she had been pretending these emotions existed in a pure abstract shape, and nothing could have been further from the truth)

She has known him far too long, far too well. She has forgotten there could be things she didn't know. Like the sound at the back of his throat he is doing now, with his nose pressed against her cheek, when she rolls her hips under him, that sound is new, Riza didn't know it. It makes her curious – what else is there? She know what it feels like, to spend so much time with the man that all of her clothes end up smelling like him. She didn't know what it felt like, to have him run his fingertips along her collarbone, up to the curve of her neck and back across the hollow of her neck again, with the thirst and reverence of someone trying to read the secrets of ancient stones. She didn't know the softness of the skin under his belly, how it makes him seem endearingly common, just a body. She didn't know how it felt like, being so close that Roy could mouth her name and she would still know he was calling.

Now she knows.

 

 

 

**[x]**

His eyes are closed for a long time. As if he needed to shut out some of his senses or he'd overload with this all.

When he looks at her again it is clear-eyed, like somebody who has waited up all night just to see the dawn, tired and exhilarated at the same time. The edges blur but the center is the most precise image you'll ever see.

Riza shifts against his pillow, propped on one elbow, trying to carve out a space of her own in an unfamiliar bed. She doesn't fit just yet. She is settling in. It's not the first time Roy has seen her naked (they were in a war together) but now that she is finally here, where he wants her to be, where she wants to be, it baffles him.

`I'm sorry,´ he says.

`What for?´

`I'm not sure it was the proper way to do this.´

Riza takes his hand.

He needs to be looking at her when he speaks. Her expression does not fool him; Roy knows she always looks calmer than she feels. It is kind of a good thing she is nervous, too. They are in this together.

`I felt like it,´ he tries to explain, a bit too apologetic.

`I felt like it too.´

She presses the palm of her hand against the back of his neck. His hair is damp with sweat. Still he feels bad. He believes this should have been more dramatic. He doesn't say this, of course. Riza would think he is being silly. Riza already knows _he is_ silly. No reason to give her any more ammunition. He had wished more for her, though. He has always wished more, much more for Riza, ever since the first moment he met her and she was a shy teenager with sad eyes and Roy wished the world for her, there and then.

`There are things we should have done before,´ he explains. `But... I mean, you know how I feel about you. You _do_. Do you?´

She nods. He rests his weight on her again. Something hums inside him, like livewire under his skin.

`In a moment I'm going to tell you, anyway.´

It's all very unoriginal, and they like that.

He leans down, puts her mouth against her ear. Riza can feel the flush in his cheeks, hot against her earlobe. He whispers; for some reason his voice makes her laugh. It makes him laugh too and suddenly they are trembling, he is trembling on top of her, she is trembling underneath his body, and inside each other.

 

 

 

**[x]**

His house opens to her like a book, like Roy himself. She can read it, even in this half-light, this middle of the night. She has known every place he has lived in for the last decade, but she has never felt it right to inhabit them until now. Not the same way Roy could come into her house and put her at ease with his presence, bring food or books or work and sit in her chairs and make her world a bit brighter. Now it's the middle of the night and she feels she can claim this: her fingertips brushing the spines of his books, she takes in his rooms, she glances upon familiar corners to discover if they have changed –if _she_ has changed– in the last few hours. There's a dichotomy in the state of the place that would surprise anyone who doesn't know Roy; half of it tends to the messy and the impetuous – the open book on the coffee table, the half-empty glass, the lack of any apparent order in the bookshelves, unmatched colours for the cushions, and the fact he hasn't quite finished unpacking yet, after a month, the last of of the cardboard boxes from Central waiting in a corner in the living room, opened but full. All of this is Roy, and her knowledge of the symbols and metaphors is scholar-like. But there's the other half, the part that tells you the story of someone who has been a soldier for the best part of his life, a story of clothes folded according to regulation, of straight edges, of fondness for the geometrical and sensible and clean. The lack of decoration, the simplicity of arrangement. That is also Roy.

`Can't sleep?´ asks his voice behind her.

`Mmm-uh,´ she replies, staring out the window. The way Roy has placed the furniture looking towards it.

City lights become tiny specks of dust at the edge of town and Riza can spot the first warnings of dawn behind them, tendrils of pink and blue breaking the night sky.

`Careful,´ Roy says, reaching her side. `I could have thought you had run away in the middle of the night.´

His back against the glass, Roy is smiling as he says this but something tells Riza that he might have considered that option for a moment, for the smallest fraction of a second. That is also Roy.

She shakes her head. `Did you really think that?´

`Not really,´ and his smile widens, boyish – it makes her remember how long she's known him.

Then his expressions sobers up, and he is serious, older, more grown into himself. Riza has always been in awe (and a bit wary) of how he can do that, flip a switch in his brain and his face transforms, how he can go from a mask and a joke to complete honesty in the time that it takes him to blink.

He touches her elbow gently, gingerly.

`Are you okay?´

`Yes, I am,´ Riza rushes her reply because he is an absolute idiot and they haven't done this before and she wants to be careful, she doesn't want to break anything, not for the smallest fraction of a second. `It's just that... I couldn't fall asleep.´

Roy nods, `I know. Me neither. I'm too... – _you know_ – to sleep.´

He lets his fingers run up and down her arm, until Riza catches his wrist and presses his hand against her skin, keeps it there.

She looks out at the sky, the colours of the horizon like an oil painting, and spreading upwards. She wants to live in this tiny pocket of unreality, with its embarrassments and its false starts, a bit longer. She doesn't want to calculate how many hours until they have to leave for work. She doesn't want to but she does, because she is Riza Hawkeye.

`We are going to be a wreck tomorrow,´ she says, and though it's no joke there's a warm humour in her voice. A sense of complicity. Things have changed, but only in degrees.

`Yes, we are,´ Roy agrees, perhaps a little too loud, joyful to see her back in a teasing mood. `We are going to fall asleep in meetings, and everybody will see the dark rings under our eyes and everybody will just _know_.´

`We'll get in trouble.´

`For... for breaking the _rules_.´

She is smiling openly now. `We'll be punished.´

`Or worse. We'll be kicked out of the army.´

His grips on her arm tightens a bit and he draws her closer to him. Riza feels a rush of electricity, from sleep and arousal and _new_ ness.

`Dismissed with disgrace,´ she adds.

`...mmm. _Disgrace_. I like how that sounds.´

He kisses her, and then the pressure on her arm is gone and his arm is curved around her waist.

Riza reflects that, in any case, they wouldn't have been able to sleep much more tonight.

 

 

 

**[x]**

The kitchen fills with a strong scent of coffee.

They don't feel the fatigue just yet. Maybe it will take days for it all to sink in. There's something comforting about their insistence on doing this with _normalcy_. It's almost rational: when the sun comes up they shower, they put on their clothes, they make the bed and they sit down to have breakfast in the kitchen.

The familiar makes this transition easier; this is not the first time they have breakfast together. This is not even the first time they have breakfast together in each other's houses, or the first time they spend the night in the same room, they start the day together, in synch. They have known each other for a long, long time, after all. There are no new gestures, only new meanings.

This time, though, there's an edge.

When he is preparing the coffee Roy finds the Rules & Regulations manual, still opened, like a relic, on the counter. He tosses it to Riza and they share a mischievous smile.

They have done this before, but they have never broken these rules before. They are partners in crime now, what they are now is some kind of secret. That can't last, of course, shouldn't, but Roy intends to have fun while it does.

He makes her sit while he cooks. He can feel her staring at his back and it unnerves him almost pleasantly.

Roy likes having her here. He doesn't mind getting all mushy about it because he is a mushy person. This is what has been missing. He has moved from house to house, from city to city, cardboard boxes upon cardboard boxes, since he was sixteen. Many places have felt like home, but none of them have felt _complete_.

They eat fast (soldiers' unbreakable habit) and with very few words passed between them, but it's not exactly awkward. It's just something they'll have to learn.

She stands up to leave first.

`Separate cars?´ he asks.

`We wouldn't want anybody to suspect.´

He stops her when she is about to open the door. He grabs her arm, fingers around her wrist.

`Everybody will know,´ he tells her, trying to sound light but betrayed by a hint of urgency. `They will take one look at me and they will know.´

Riza shrugs. `You've always had a very bad poker face.´

`My poker face has always been excellent,´ he protests.

He takes offence, but Riza keeps shaking her head.

`No. It's very bad.´

She tiptoes. A kiss on the corner of his mouth.

`We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,´ she adjusts the jacket of her uniform. When she looks up at him she smiles. ` _Sir_.´

 

 

 

**[x]**

She leaves first but Roy looks around and draws pleasure from the fact that the house now feels inhabited by her, almost haunted. Her presence and they night they have spent together. The night is behind them and before them. His body, too, is haunted by her, it's no longer just his own; it's the body that loved Riza, the body Riza loved.

If he doesn't hurry he is going to be late for work.

He doesn't hurry.

Roy picks up the rulebook and puts it back in its place in the shelf, fondly.


End file.
